“Watchmen,” the movie, caused a stir at the box office when its opening weekend nabbed $55 million, the highest opening gross of the year and third-highest March opening ever. It’s a shame that none of the money will trickle down to the artist Malcolm Mc Neill, whose image of the Mayan Death God (right) in […]
Paul Newman, R.I.P.
Paul Newman, who died at 83, once told me in an interview, “There’s a part of me that has always wanted to win an Oscar when I’m 83, so I could say, ‘So there!’” The interview took place in Boston, at the Meridien Hotel. Newman was 57 then and in top form, promoting “The Verdict.” […]
BUSTER KEATON REVISITED
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. “This book is merely a fan’s notes,” Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you’re […]
ARNOLD, BILL, AND YOKO
By JAN HERMAN What is Arnold Schwarzenegger doing making bigger news than ever? This guy was yesteryear. For me, he has built-in nostalgia. I recall an interview I did with him in Chicago in 1982. It began:
My Checkered Career
I’ve been a staff writer covering arts and culture at the Los Angeles Times, a reporter and movie reviewer at The Daily News in New York, a reporter and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, a senior editor/producer and the theater critic for MSNBC.com, and a fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. […]